Alan Diaz, photographer behind Elian Gonzalez image, dies aged 71

It was the photograph that would help shape the course of the 2000 US election campaign, US-Cuban relations and child custody debates: terrified Cuban boy Elian Gonzalez screaming down the barrel of a gun.

Associated Press photojournalist Alan Diaz earned a Pulitzer Prize for that photograph in 2001. He died today, aged 71.

Diaz's daughter, Aillette Rodriguez-Diaz, confirmed that the acclaimed photojournalist died on Tuesday. The cause of death wasn't immediately known.

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Diaz would be the only photojournalist to capture the moment five months later when US immigration agents ended the bitter international custody battle with a pre-dawn raid the night before Easter, pulling a terrified Elian Gonzalez from his uncle's Little Havana home so he could be returned to his father in Cuba.

Diaz said he was just in the right place at the right time.

He had spent months chatting with Gonzalez's relatives and neighbours over cafecito and cigarettes, earning their trust by respecting an order from the boy's uncle to not speak to the child.

When he heard a radio call that the raid had begun, Diaz jumped a fence and was ushered into the house by a friend of Gonzalez's relatives.

Diaz poses at Domino Park on Calle Ocho in the Little Havana neighborhood of Miami, near where the raid took place. Picture: AP (AP)

Aiming his camera at the bedroom door, Diaz tried to soothe the child, saying, "Nothing's happening, it's going to be all right."

Moments later, armed federal agents wearing tactical gear burst inside to find the crying boy in the arms of the Cuban boater who had rescued him.

Diaz later handed off his camera's memory card without checking the images — he just called AP's photo editor in Miami and said, "I got the shot."

After the image hit the wires and network television news, Diaz saw how both Cuban leader Fidel Castro and Cuban-American community leaders used it to argue that the other side was brutal and heartless.

"I have no opinion on it. I shot the moment. That's all," Diaz said last year.

"Good or bad, that's what happened that morning."

The AP hired Diaz as a staff photographer two months after the raid, sending him to cover sporting events such as the Super Bowl, hurricanes, the aftermath of September 11, elections and breaking news.

"Alan Diaz captured, in his iconic photographs, some of the most important moments of our generation - the bitter, violent struggle over the fate of a small Cuban boy named Elian Gonzalez, the magnified eye of a Florida election official trying to make sense of hanging chads and disputed ballots in the 2000 presidential election," AP executive editor Sally Buzbee said.

"He was gravelly-voiced and kindhearted, generous with his expertise. And like all great photographers, he was patient. He was able to wait for the moment."

"Alan Diaz will be remembered for taking one of the most iconic photographs in Miami's history," AP Miami photo editor Marta Lavandier said.

"But what is less known about Alan is that he was a humble, dedicated, hard-working news photographer that loved covering every aspect of his community."

"He was the king of the family," Rodriguez-Diaz said. "He cared about all of his friends and colleagues. His life was photography and my mother."

After winning the Pulitzer Prize in 2001, he was awed by the celebration from his heroes in photojournalism.

"Joe Rosenthal wanted to meet me? Wow," Diaz said, still shaking his head at being honoured by the AP photojournalist who produced the iconic image of US Marines and a Navy sailor raising the American flag over Iwo Jima.

Diaz was hired as a staffer by AP two months after he took the iconic photograph of Elian Gonzalez, and was sent to capture many national sporting events. Picture: Alan Diaz / AP (Alan Diaz / AP)This included capturing Prince Harry play waterpolo in Florida in 2016. Picture: Alan Diaz / AP (Alan Diaz / AP)

Diaz was born in New York to Cuban parents. He spent his adolescence in Cuba, where he studied photography with Alberto Korda, whose 1960 portrait of Marxist revolutionary Che Guevara became one of the most reproduced images in history.

In 1978, he moved to Miami and began shooting in Little Havana for Cuban-American organisations and publications.

One memorable assignment was a meeting of leaders of anti-Castro efforts and Frank Sturgis, one of the Watergate burglars, who had fought alongside Castro in Cuba before turning against him.